[unreadable] [unreadable] The third international conference on Dense Deposit Disease (DDD, also known as Membranoproliferative Glomerulonephritis Type II or MPGN II) will be held August 15-17, 2008 as a Hinxton Conference of Excellence at the Sanger Centre on the Genome Campus, Hinxton, England. The aims and objectives of this meeting are: 1) To present advances in our understanding of the pathogenesis of DDD as these advances relate to the development of DDD-appropriate therapies; 2) To present data from animal studies as these data relate to the use of a murine model of DDD to rapidly evaluate potential therapies in vivo; 3) To identify, define and address issues that must be considered to begin clinical trials for DDD in the next 1-2 years. These aims and objectives are a logical extension of the first two international conference on DDD and will be achieved by: 1) Bringing together clinicians and basic scientists with expertise in alternative pathway of complement; nephropathologists with expertise in DDD; clinical nephrologists with expertise in glomerulonephritis and clinical trials; geneticists with expertise in DDD; and biochemists with expertise in glycosaminoglycans and the glomerular basement membrane (GBM); 2) Focusing on the pathogenic mechanisms that lead to DDD, with special emphasis on recent discoveries that implicate breakdown products of C3b, in particular iC3b, C3dg and C3c, as proteins that lead to formation of the dense deposits; 3) Focusing on the implementation of novel clinically relevant and specific diagnostic tests for DDD based on the serum ratio of C3b to iC3b, C3dg and C3c; 4) Exploring genetic advances in our understanding of DDD as a complex disease and how the number of genetic risk alleles a patient with DDD carries correlates with the likelihood of progressing to end-stage renal failure; 5) Reviewing a recently developed on-line database, the Dense Deposit Disease Outcomes Database (DDDOD), that permits global entry of patient data in a HIPPA-compliant format and facilitates outcomes reporting thereby providing clinicians who may otherwise treat only one or two cases of DDD in a lifetime a virtual real-time experience with multiple cases; 6) Reviewing the only current available clinical trial for DDD using Sulodexide (a Phase 1 trial; ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier NCT00583427) as a model for clinical trials using other agents; 7) Reviewing study trial design, recognizing that because DDD is a rare disease, a randomized control design may not be suitable. The outcomes of the first two meeting were published in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (Appel et al., 2005; Smith et al., 2007) and have impacted the care of patients with DDD. We will also publish the proceedings of this meeting and hope this publication will foster continued interest in developing DDD-specific therapies to treat patients with this disease. [unreadable] [unreadable] [unreadable]